


Kingdom of Dust

by LORBEERPRINZ



Series: Tumblr Promts [9]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Main Video Game Series), Pocket Monsters: Black & White | Pokemon Black and White Versions, Pocket Monsters: Black 2 & White 2 | Pokemon Black 2 & White 2 Versions
Genre: Drama, F/M, FerrisWheelShipping, Tumblr Prompt, well hardly shippy but welp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-18
Updated: 2016-02-18
Packaged: 2018-05-21 12:54:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6052345
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LORBEERPRINZ/pseuds/LORBEERPRINZ
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her long search for N, Touko had exhausted all places except for one. She didn't even expect to find him there, but finding him turned out to be not even half as hard as convincing him to leave his crumbled prison.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kingdom of Dust

**Author's Note:**

> After a long absence due to stress and all, I began writing again, yay :D This is an old tumblr promt I took way too long to do; the promt is "Things you said when you were crying", and I'm not even really sure if this is what anon had expected to come out from it, but I tried my best. While I love N, I don't like any kind of ships involving him, so it's probably not as shippy as anon would have liked it to be, I suppose, but I was nevertheless surprised by how fast I was able to finish this. Normally requests involving ships I don't like take me much longer x'D It's a good thing N is a canonical mood swinger (according to Masuda's blog entry about him), otherwise the rapid change in emotions would have made no sense other than preserving drama orz  
> Hope anyone likes it anyway ^^;

Touko had seen a lot of places during the past two and a half years of her Pokémon journey, but even among the unique forests and caves she had discovered all around the world, this one here was very different. One reason for that was probably that, technically, it was neither a forest nor a cave, even though she was below Isshu’s Victory Road according to her map. It baffled her how a whole, huge castle could have ended up submerged beyond the earth. She had never seen it fall apart in person, only heard reports of it having happened. From what people had told her, the weight of it must have broken a hole into the desert ground and had brought down the complete building.  
She wandered around, lucky to still trust in her old but comfortable boots, and realized that she couldn’t actually access most parts of the crumbled castle. There were a few places she could climb to, but most were blocked off by rocks, fallen columns, or didn’t even actually exist anymore to begin with.

Despite being a Pokémon trainer, Touko did not want to exhaust her Pokémon just like that by asking them for light. Somehow, what had happened at the beginning of her journey had left quite an impression on her in this regard. She had come to believe that maybe humans should at least think twice before exhausting their Pokémon with certain tasks.  
Instead, she pulled a flashlight from her bag. Some spots in the castle’s remains had light falling in from way up above, but most corridors were shrouded in darkness. The beam of light before her made all the dust visible that hurt her lungs with every breath down here, as well as a lot of trails in the dust and dirt.  
All these footsteps fit to those he could hear from time to time. It was almost ironic that even this place had been completely taken over by wild Pokémon by now, which were oblivious to the events that had taken place here.  
Touko smiled. Maybe he would be happy to see this turn of things down here.

After a bit of walking around and climbing over heaps of rubble, she encountered a dead end. Touko sighed and was about to turn back and leave, but then she noticed a door in the corner of her flashlight beam that looked familiar.  
She wasn’t even really sure why exactly she seemed to know this door, as she couldn’t remember any kind of specially looking door aside from the one to the throne room, and this one was definitely not it. One of the two halves of the big door was missing and revealed that there was some light shining into the room behind. The other half was broken down, stimulating Touko’s curiosity, almost whispering at her to take a look inside.

She sneaked into the room, careful to not startle any Pokémon that might hide in this place. A hole in the ceiling gave enough light so that she did not even need her flashlight anymore.  
Touko swallowed. Now she knew why this room had seemed familiar.  
The cold, bluish light from above did not only show mountains of dirt and stones, but also a floor full of formally white clouds. A big chest of blocks lay around, its spilled contents mixing with the rubble everywhere. Toys and stuffed dolls were coated in dust. The indoor basketball hoop had been knocked over at some point, the half pipe was visible but inaccessible.  
She took another step into the room. It seemed like there was a little shadow that had peeked over a heap of rocks just now, but it disappeared.

The young woman remembered how the room had looked the first time she had seen it, how it had weirded her out knowing the one living in there was older than her and still made his personal place look like something a kindergardener would feel comfortable in. And from what she knew he had spent endless years in here with hardly any chance to go outside.

It had been his world, and now this world was broken, dirty, useless.

 

 

“What are you doing here…?”

 

Touko flew around. The voice behind her was soft and small, but the least thing she would have expected down here. Maybe the steps she had heard earlier had not belonged to a Pokémon after all.  
She saw a shadow standing in the broken door, could hardly see its face or outline or anything.  
But she instantly remembered that voice.  
She swallowed again, probably not because of the dry air in this place. Somehow, she had not expected him to be here.  
But even the seconds she had won through this did not help her finding an appropriate response.

 

“I… well… uhm…”

 

With slow, but steady steps the figure walked out of the shadows until the light from above fell on it, revealing the actual owner of this outline.  
Touko, however, already knew exactly who it was.

“Hardly anyone knows this place still exists… it’s quite a surprise you’re here.”  
The dust flying around the room almost made it look like N’s hair was glittering. Maybe it was even the dust that visibly clung to it, Touko thought. In fact, she felt he looked a little different from when they had last seen each other. His face seemed untouched by the past two years, but she could still see that the times had not been peacefully for him. He seemed a little hardened, more mature.  
At the same time, however, N looked tired in a way.

He walked past Touko, looking around the room as if this was the first time he was seeing it, and finally sat down on the wooden box that used to contain his building blocks and trains.  
The brunette looked after him, swallowed again and the finally decided she had found a useful answer to his earlier question.

 

“I’ve been looking for you, all these years. This was the last place I could think of, although I didn’t think you’d actually be here. This is not a place for a person to live in anymore…”

 

N showed her a little smile, but it appeared bitter.  
No, the young woman mentally corrected herself, not bitter. Rather sad.

 

“This is the only place I have left. There’s nowhere else I could go…”

 

Was it just Touko’s imagination or did N talk slower than back then? She couldn’t really tell. She didn’t even know if that made sense.  
When N looked at her again after seemingly contemplating his worn-out shoes for a moment, she decided to smile at him too, but a real smile. She tried the warmest smile she could manage.  
“That’s not true. You could have always come to me, or Cheren, or Bel, or anyone. We’ve all been worried about you, you know.”

But he just shook his head and his sad smile vanished, leaving only a face that was almost completely devoid of expression.  
“We both know that’s impossible.”  
N reached to his side and without even looking, he drew out a model of the fabled Raimon City Ferris Wheel. He silently played around with the little cabins for a bit, let them dangle around and turned the wheel. As he did so, it began to play music, a short melody Touko remembered having heard when she had been in this room two years ago, but now it was distorted. The longer she looked at N’s long fingers playing around with the components of this model, the more she saw how broken it was. Hardly anything really worked on it anymore, a shame considering the originally great craftsmanship it used to display.  
The melody reflected all of this, broken and dark and empty.  
Touko wished it would stop.

She took a deep breath, the dust in the air hurting her lungs, and reached out with one hand to him, offering herself as a way to get up. To get out of here.  
“N, nothing is impossible. Otherwise neither of us would be here right now, you know?”  
She swallowed again, tried to moisture her dry throat. How could she make him understand what she was talking about? It was always so easy with her friends, they always knew exactly what was in her head and heart, and she knew them, but how would someone be able to look into his head? What would one see? She forced a smile.  
“Come, let’s get out of here. Nothing is impossible.”

 

N looked away, turned his attention to the toy in his hands once more. The way he had lowered his head, Touko was unable to see his face, but she did notice his slightly trembling hands.  
He kept on playing around with the Ferris Wheel for a bit until he spoke again, so silently she almost couldn’t hear it.  
“What do you actually know…”

The toy began to squeak under his grip, the melody had stopped.

 

“You don’t have to be here, N. You don’t have to be alone.”

She put her hand on his shoulder while saying this, but she almost didn’t finish her sentence, and the hand hardly came to rest anywhere, before N jumped up, throwing the Raimon City toy to the ground in the process.  
Touko’s heart made a jump, she stumbled back a few steps from his sudden violent motion. He yanked her hand away at the same time, making her almost lose balance.  
N glared down at her and Touko felt her heart beat up to her throat. She had never been afraid of him before, but now in this faint light, half of his face in hard shadows, he looked more intimidating than ever.  
Tears seemed to glisten in his eyes.

 

“What. Do you actually. Know.”

 

He took a step forward, forcing Touko back a few more inches. She knew she shouldn’t be afraid of him, there was no reason to.  
But right now she felt like she could understand or predict him even less than normally.  
Suddenly his features appeared to soften a little.

 

“I mean… what if he comes back here? Have you heard what happened to Ghetsis? I’ve seen how he is right now, but maybe he gets better one day… Maybe he comes back here then, maybe we can finally talk things out, maybe I…”

His speech became faster with every word, the tears in his eyes began to roll down his cheeks.  
Touko swallowed again.

“I mean, I was looking for you, and you’re okay, so it’s all alright. You have your places to go to, so many places. But I, I need to stay here, I can’t go anywhere else. I mean, I only have him, I only have this kind of family, you know, Zorua is gone too, and he doesn’t have anyone either, and I just… I need to…”

He broke off, the words seemingly stuck in his throat. Touko could see him trying to breathe deeply to calm himself down, but it didn’t really work. He furiously kneaded his thumbs inside his fists, the trembling not going unnoticed.  
N’s eyes jumped from one point to the next, squinting ever so often in desperate tries to release the hopefully last drops of burning tears.

Touko took a few more steps backward, it both surprised and hurt her to see N like that. It was something she had never expected to see from him, he hadn’t even cried when Ghetsis, this guy who dared to call himself N’s father, had heaped insult after insult on him, mocked and abused him after losing to her.  
And yet here he was, crying because of a man that obviously did not care for him a little bit.  
The brunette could feel the tears rising in her own eyes, maybe out of fear, maybe because the situation N had brought himself into touched her so much. Maybe because, in a way, it was partly her fault.  
She swallowed heavily again, tried to suppress her own urge to cry. One of them had to stay strong here.

 

“Forget him, N… Somebody like him is not worth your time, or attention, or anything. Please… Come with me. Come with us. You can stay with us, we can be your family, all of us. Please…”

 

It was no use. Hot, thin streams began to make their way down Touko’s cheeks. She bit her lip, tried to hide her sadness in both her face and her voice.  
She had to stay strong, for both herself and him.

 

“I only have this kind of family”, N repeated, shaking his head.  
After a moment of silence he pressed his fists to his eyes, inhaled audibly.  
“You’re a friend, somehow, but not family.”  
He hurried past her with heavy steps towards the exit, over his beloved Ferris Wheel, disappearing into the shadows more with every inch. Before he could be swallowed completely, Touko rubbed the tears from her eyes and offered torchlight support.  
N didn’t seem to care.

She thought she heard him whispering something like “Let’s stop here”, but she wasn’t quite sure. Maybe he had not even talked to her at all.  
A Pokémon peeked out from somewhere, she could see two big orbs reflecting the light down the corridor. After a moment, it disappeared again.  
Through the silence, she could hear N breathing heavily.

“You know…”, she started again, “a family doesn’t have to be someone you’re related to. If there’s people you feel save and happy around, then you can call them your family if you like.”  
She tried to come up with an example from any kind of Pokémon, but her brain refused to give her the right outcome. She was sure there were species living in this kind of amicable groups, but which ones actually did that again…? She couldn’t tell.  
It was so frustrating she couldn’t make him understand. And for some reason it hurt her that N still regarded Ghetsis more important than her. She had never hurt him, after all.  
All she wanted was to see him happy and content.

 

N’s breathing sped up. Was he crying again?  
“You’re a friend. You’re not my family.”  
He murmured something else as he walked deeper into the dark hallway with Touko slowly following him. It sounded like he was repeating these last sentences over and over again. His voice seemed to break down more and more in between.  
It hurt so much.

 

“Fine”, she said without being able to see him anymore, “then I’m just your friend… That’s… fine too, I guess.”  
She swallowed once again. All that dust and dirt had left a weird, almost metal taste in her mouth.  
“But that doesn’t change that you can always come to us, come to me. You don’t have to be here. You don’t have to be alone. Please…”  
She stared at the shaking beam of light in front of her, was almost waiting for N to argue that he wasn’t alone as long as he had his Pokémon friends. Maybe he would never really understand what she meant.  
She tried to steady her torchlight with two hands, but it didn’t help.

N turned around and looked at her, he didn’t seem to mind the light shining directly into his eyes. Touko still saw where his face was moist from tears, but there didn’t seem to be any left that were waiting to be released. Somehow, he didn’t seem to show any kind of emotion to her, even though he surely had cried just a moment before.

Was the music box melody running again?

 

“Come back to us one day”, she whispered.

 

They both stood there in silence, N’s face didn’t change at all.  
Then finally, Touko couldn’t tell after how long, his features softened a bit. He still seemed sad, somehow.

 

“I might think about it.”

 

 

Without any further word, he turned around and left.  
Touko couldn’t even shout after him, had lost any idea what to say or how to convince him. Maybe it was for the better to settle with this half of a promise for now.  
At least it meant he wouldn’t abandon her completely.

She held the torchlight up again, more firmly now, and watched after the formally great king wandering through the shattered remains of a kingdom that had never been his at all.  
After she had lost sight of him in the shadows, she too turned around, leaving in the opposite direction.

 

She didn’t come back to the castle.  
She just hoped they would meet again, at a place more suited for both of them.

 

Touko didn’t know when that would be, but she was sure the day would come.


End file.
